Can Lungi Ngidi Take Delhi Capitals to IPL 2023 Today?

Delhi Capitals is one of the three Indian Premier League teams to have never won the championship in all 14 seasons. In the most recent edition of the tournament, they only managed to secure the fifth spot with 7 wins and 14 points.

Surely, the franchise knows how they need to secure some of the best cricketers during the auction.

DC was able to sign some of the most skillful cricketers today like Lungisani True-man Ngidi or Lungi Ngidi.

About Lungi Ngidi

Ngidi is a South African cricketer who's played for the South African National team since 2017. He's a right-handed fast steam bowler hailing from Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.

He's been playing professionally since 2015 with the Northerns (2015-present) and Titans team (2016-2021) in his country. Aside from Delhi Capitals, he's also played for Chennai Super Kings in 2018 to 2021 for his IPL run.

CSK surely played a huge role in building Ngidi's confidence on the field. In an interview last year, he was open about how thankful he was with CSK, especially his team captain, MS Dhoni. According to him, Dhoni trusting his skill surely boosted his confidence a lot.

"Having someone of Dhoni's caliber put his trust in me to win him games when I was 22 was massive for me.

"The IPL also taught me how to handle a big crowd. I'd never played in front of 60,000 people and that was a bit overwhelming at the start. But once you get going, it's a breeze," Ngdi explained.

Delhi Capitals purchased Ngidi for 50 Lakh in 2022. Take a look at Ngidi's Bowling stats since he started playing in the IPL in 2018:

Throughout his pro cricket career, Ngidi has received multiple awards including one of the five Cricketers of the Year in the 2018 South African Cricket Awards and T20 Cricketer of the Year at Cricket South Africa's annual awards ceremony in 2022.

The Rest of the Delhi Capitals Lineup

Whether Ngidi will play a huge role in helping Delhi Capitals get that first sweet win depends on who'll be playing alongside with. This year, many cricket fans are looking forward to seeing how the team will perform and see 10CRIC IPL. It's been pointed out that DC's batting unit needs improvements and Ngidi is one of the solutions for that.

Other players who make Delhi Capitals' batting lineup a lot solid are Anrich Nortje, Mustafizur Rahman, Khaleel Ahmed, and Chetan Sakariya.

The spin bowling department also has skillful players like Kuldeep Yadav, Axar Patel, and Lalit Yadav.

The team also now has better backup options with the likes of David Warner, Prithvi Shaw, and Manish Pandey.

Some are worried that Ngidi might be benched again throughout the season just like what happened this year, but he's part of the predicted Playing XI for this edition.

Here are the predicted Playing XI for Delhi Capitals this year according to The Hindu Sports Star column:

Batters: Yash Dhull, Sarfaraz Khan, Ripal Patel, Rovman Powell (WI), Prithvi Shaw, David Warner (AUS), Rilee Rossouw (SA), Manish Pandey.

All-rounders: Lalit Yadav, Mitchell Marsh (AUS), Axar Patel.

Bowlers: Khaleel Ahmed, Aman Hakim Khan, Praveen Dubey, Kuldeep Yadav, Mustafizur Rahman (BAN), Kamlesh Nagarkoti, Lungi Ngidi (SA), Anrich Nortje (SA), Vicky Ostwal, Chetan Sakariya, Mukesh Kumar, Ishant Sharma.

Wrapping Up: What Should Delhi Capitals Do to Win?

Delhi Capitals team captain Rishabh Pant has been vocal about what the team needs to improve last year since they did experience successive defeats in the previous season.

Pant said, "As a batting unit, we have to find ways to improve ourselves. In the last two-three matches, we are seeing a pattern, we need to work not to lose wickets in a bunch and play less dot balls in the middle overs."

Whether that's something we'll see in this upcoming season is something Delhi Fans are looking forward to.